Arts & Humanities

Outlining a history of film going too far, of seeming madness and wasteful extravagance, this text examines films that are cinematic landmarks and monuments to directors' hubris, from Griffith's "Intolerance" to Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and Carax's "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf".

Hopewell Shakespeare, a young London apprentice, is bored with his lot and besotted with the Globe, where his cousin William is already famous. Inspired by the plays he sees there, Hopewell sets out on a pirate ship in search of adventure, landing on an island just like the one in "The Tempest".

James Kelman, Alasdair Gray and Candia McWilliam have been joined by Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy and Irvine Welsh in drawing attention to Scottish literature. This is an anthology of contemporary Scottish fiction.

An American soldier is sent to a remote outpost on the frontier. He lives alone with a horse and wolf for company until he encounters a neighbouring Sioux tribe. Slowly he becomes absorbed into the tribe - learning the language and customs of the Sioux - until his old persona is transformed.

This is a readable account of Irish history in the first quarter of the 20th century. Drawing on the most recent scholarship on this period, the author presents a balanced narrative, with a useful historiographical section at the end of each chapter.

Features three interlinking stories about Edinburgh. This book presents three writers' radically different takes on Edinburgh life - a social mix that ranges from Welsh's Leith junkies to McCall Smith's New Town haute bourgeoisie.

After four years of bloody warfare Bernard Jacquelain returns from the trenches a changed man. No more the naive hopes and dreams of the teenager who went to war. Attracted by the lure of money and success, Bernard embarks on a life of luxuriant delinquency supported by suspect financial dealings and easy virtue.

Continuum has repackaged some of its key academic backlist titles to make them available at a more affordable price. These reissues will have new ISBNs, distinctive jackets and strong branding. They cover a range of subject areas that have a continuing student sale and make great supplementary reading more accessible.

Alfie's not really a bad guy. It's just that he has this overwhelming desire for the ladies. You might say that "birds" are irresistible to him, sort of second nature. There's Ruby, Clare, Siddie, Carla, and Annie - but who's counting? Certainly not Alfie.

Edited by his son, this is a collection of the letters of the American novelist and short-story writer, John Cheever. It includes correspondence with contemporaries such as Saul Bellow, Malcolm Cowley, John Updike and Philip Roth, and addresses all periods and many aspects of Cheever's adult life.

Flamineo encourages his sister, Vittoria in her affair with Brachiano, aiding Brachiano to dispose of Vittoria's husband and Brachiano's wife. The lovers face trial and escape briefly, but they and Flamineo meet bloody retribution.

What makes a classic book? How do you get one published? What happens behind the scenes at a publishers? Will e-books mean paper books become a thing of the past? How do writers come up with their ideas in the first place? This work provides children with a useful background to the world of books.

In these short stories, Julie Orringer's characters struggle mightily against the engulfing forces that threaten to overtake us all. All of them finally learn, gloriously if at great cost, how to breathe underwater.

The daughter of a sailor, on her second marriage and 12 years older than her husband, Mary Anne was highly eccentric, liable to misbehave and (worse still) overdressed for grand society dinners. Her beloved Diz was of Jewish descent, a mid-ranking novelist and frequently mired in debt. He was fiercely protective and completely devoted to his wife.

Aldo Busi, known for his translations of Goethe, Christina Stead and "Alice in Wonderland" as well as his cult novels "Seminar on Youth" and "Sodomy in Corpo II", relates the picaresque adventures of a pair of drifting salesmen in the underwear trade.

Almost every woman worries about her weight. For the author, it became unavoidable - by the age of seventeen she weighed over twenty stone and had tried everything, from dieting to fat camp to wearing big t-shirts. This is a memoir of one woman's quest to accept her own body image - to feel normal.

When Carrie inherits a property in Tuscany, she falls in love with both the house and her cousin Leo who is living there. She is guiltily relieved when her husband dies, and remains with Leo. But he soon reveals his true, violent character, as Carrie uncovers a web of deceit.

Maggie seems to be going up in the world. Compared to living with her impoverished family, working as a maid is a big improvement. Her new life allows her to enter a completely different world, the world of the suffragettes and, more than that, the Pankhursts - icons for a generation of women in search of justice, equality and the right to vote.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After an introduction, in which the author defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, this book relaxes into a world tour of the premodern novel.

When Giuseppe finds a green violin washed up in New York docks, somehow he KNOWS it will change his life. The very same day, Hannah, a maid at a local hotel, gets a strange new mistress. Across the square, Frederick, a clockmaker's apprentice, hides an amazing gift. Soon they are swept away in an epic adventure.

Arranged into five themes, this book includes over forty projects that are presented in terms of their innovation and uniqueness, tapping into the current trend and passion for eco-design, and appealing to a broad readership as well as architectural practitioners.